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Ringier Axel Springer to Buy Top Polish Internet Portal

The company will pay Polish broadcaster TVN $270 million for a 75 percent stake in Onet.pl.

COLOGNE, Germany - Ringier Axel Springer (RAS), a joint venture between Swiss and German media conglomerates Ringier and Axel Springer, has signed a deal to buy a majority stake in Poland's number one Internet portal Onet.pl from Polish broadcaster TVN.

Under the deal, RAS will pay TVN around $270 million (PLN 956 million) for a 75 percent stake in Onet. TVN will retain a 25 percent stake in the portal, which it will first be able to sell off in 2016. Both stakes in Onet will be held through a separate holding company called Holdco.

Onet is Poland's leading online portal. According to RAS, it is used by some 70 percent of Internet users in the Eastern European country.

The deal marks a further eastward expansion for RAS, which already prints more than 70 newspapers and magazines in Poland, including the local versions of Newsweek and Forbes and Fakt, a Polish tabloid modeled after Springer's top-selling German daily newspaper Bild.